AOC Wants To Abolish Prisons, Compares Incarceration To Slavery

Holly Matkin

Oct 8, 2019

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez published a series of tweets on Monday advocating for the abolition of prisons.

Queens, NY – Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez kicked off her latest call for criminal justice reform by likening incarceration to slavery and calling for the abolition of prisons in a series of tweets on Monday.

“I know the term ‘prison abolition’ is breaking some people’s brains,” Ocasio-Cortez lamented in one tweet. “The right is already freaking out.”

Ocasio-Cortez launched her latest diatribe on the back of a tweet by comedienne Chelsea Handler, who complained about the amount of jail time given to a 21-year-old Florida man who overslept jury duty.

“10 days. He’s spending the same amount of time in jail that parents who committed college bribery are spending. Why? Because he’s black,” Handler tweeted.

Deandre Summerville had already been selected as the only African American member of a Palm Beach County jury when he overslept and failed to show up for jury duty, causing a delay for the entire trial.

At his sentencing, the judge pointed out that the court had been counting on Summerville to “represent a very important cross-section of our jury” and sentenced him to 10 days in jail, one year of probation, 150 hours of community service, and a $223 fine.

“Mass incarceration is our American reality. It is a system whose logic evolved from the same lineage as Jim Crow, American apartheid, & slavery,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “To end it, we have to change. That means we need to have a real conversation about decarceration & prison abolition in this country.”

She then launched into a story about a woman she said she spoke with the morning prior.

Ocasio-Cortez claimed that the woman was “thrown in Rikers as a teenager,” and that she was placed in “solitary confinement for MONTHS, aka torture.”

She was “force-fed pills” and “had drank out of toilets” due to poor conditions inside the prison, according to the congresswoman.

“A cage is a cage is a cage,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “And humans don’t belong in them.”

She noted that the United States “incarcerates more than anywhere in the world,” and declared that the country has “more than enough room to close many of our prisons and explore just alternatives to incarceration.”

According to Ocasio-Cortez, “many people in jailed or in prison don’t belong there at all” and are only incarcerated because of their socioeconomic status.

“Whether it’s punitive sentencing for marijuana possession or jailing people for their poverty & letting the rich free through systems like cash bail, we wrongly incarcerate far, far too many people,” she tweeted.

Ocasio-Cortez alleged that prisons have been used “as de facto mental hospitals, homeless shelters, & detox centers,” thereby using funds that she said could be better applied in actual programming.

“If we invested meaningfully, what do you think would happen to crime?” she asked.

But despite all of her declarations and demands, Ocasio-Cortez had little to offer about what her “prison abolition” plan would mean for violent criminals.

“People tend to say ‘what do you do with all the violent people?’ as a defense for incarcerating millions,” she tweeted, just before she passed off finding the answer to that question to people other than herself.

“Our lawmaking process means we come to solutions together, &either way we should work to an end where our prison system is dramatically smaller than it is today,” her side-stepping tweet read.

Comments (98)

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No. 1-40

Rascal1966

Oct 8, 2019

Stupid biatch!! Coddling criminals is not the answer. I pray your stupid ass is voted out and your ignorant liberal pie hole can go back to bartending!!!

JBo

Oct 8, 2019

Somewhere there's another bartender who knows how to solve all of America's problems. Scary, isn't it?

pbm4jc

Oct 8, 2019

And she's college educated...<sigh>

Jim H. - Virginia US

Oct 8, 2019

Awww, prison can include some harsh punishments.

On the subject of prison life, this came out this week...

Bootleg film shows Florida prison in all its danger, squalor. An inmate shot it on the sly

Burgers Allday

Oct 8, 2019

The Trump years have been considered to be great and we will always cherish them here at Blue Lives Matter, even as the country changes in fundamental ways. Pic is kind of hott.

MSK

Oct 8, 2019

What a total loon AOC is. It’s actually scary thinking that a member of the United States Congress could think and say the things she does. 🤡

HonorYourHeroes

Oct 8, 2019

IS SHE FUCKING CRAZY!?!?

Lochemet

Oct 8, 2019

No, the Right is not freaking out. We stopped freaking out a long time ago when we finally realized that you are NUTS!

One solution to the "incarceration problem" could be to start releasing prisoners and relocate them in AOC's district. Although, we know she is never there and doesn't actually deal too much with her district's issues because she's too busy coming up with STUPID ideas for the rest of the country and the world....

IseeWhereThisIsGoing

Oct 8, 2019

I happen to agree that 10 days in jail is absurd for being late to jury duty. Actions should have consequences, but that's an inappropriate and wrong response.

The rest of what she said, about abolishing prisons and comparing incarceration to slavery, is just nonsensical ramblings from a left wing nut job who is just making up shit to pander to those who feel their actions shouldn't have consequences, and who don't seem to understand how the real world works.

shooter

Oct 8, 2019

She is a constant and consistent source of societal hilarity.

BlueLM101

Oct 8, 2019

AOC... Who moved the rock?

Thinblueline

Oct 9, 2019

Yup, Bill Clinton locked up all the black folk with his crime initiatives, damn democrats.

frog1211

Oct 9, 2019

Maybe the conservatives should release all the violent prisoners into the general population. Then the conservatives should live in the prisons where we will get free healthcare, free meals, a free bed, and a free educations. Let the liberals who want them released deal with the violence. Without their armed guards!!!

reverett456117502

Oct 9, 2019

Why does the media continue to give this imbecile a platform? Apparently, she's never been the victim of a heinous crime or she wouldn't wave the flag to get rid of prisons. The people of New York need to wake up and vote this Einstein out of office next year. She's a travesty, along with the other 3 "Squad" members! They are absurd, and it's got nothing to do with President Trump, they've got issues!!!!

falconer

Oct 9, 2019

Screwball.

cspcapt

Oct 9, 2019

This one F×÷=Ked broad

Cstuartsr

Oct 9, 2019

AOC has got to be stupidest people that has ever been put on this earth!!
I can’t believe that voters in her district would vote a bartender in as a person to represent them in Congress. Maybe the ones she wants to turn a loose can go stay with her!! How can anybody be that stupid????

tkshields

Oct 9, 2019

forced to take pills could she be court ordered to take pills for a mental problem where she is a danger to herself or to help her threw a detox and then she was kept in isolation to keep her safe while detoxing and what is it this idiot and the drinking out of toilets hasn't she been informed about the all in one toilet/fountain setup in jails and prisons

Turk182

Oct 9, 2019

Chelsea Handler and AOC now there's two people that we should take policy advice from!! It's like dealing with 12 year olds.

Raymelson

Oct 9, 2019

She needs mental health counseling

Bailey17

Oct 9, 2019

She needs to visit a prison is what she needs to do!

Hoops

Oct 9, 2019

Who elected this idiot?

Stanracer

Oct 9, 2019

Still a nut-jobs!!!👎

Deadeye321

Oct 9, 2019

The sad part is President Trump has done more for prison reform than any other president and gets no credit.

Patriot63

Oct 9, 2019

I think she needs to take residence in one of the prisons cells and leave all cells unlocked 24/7 for at least 1 week.

magnumforc

Oct 9, 2019

When they find out she is treasonous and advocates destruction of the government, she wants to be able to stay out of prison.

Shastabeau

Oct 9, 2019

Proof a college education doesn't necessarily give you a bit of "common sense"........

2 Replies

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61mouse

Oct 9, 2019

Another educated idiot

flybynight

Oct 9, 2019

Knowledge without wisdom is worthless but in her case I don't think she even has knowledge. Sad.

jujutsujoy

Oct 9, 2019

So AOL thinks rapist, child killers, human traffickers, bank robbers, kidnappers, stalkers, wife beaters should never face any jail time? what consequences does she suggest? Or does she suggest any. We are a civilized society or at least try to be. People who hurt others and cannot control themselves need to be isolated from those they hurt and steal from. I really dont care what she thinks, unless she wants to live with the likes of the above mentioned dregs of society herself for a years of two.

Mrs.E

Oct 9, 2019

She is insane...far worse as time goes on. Look at her eyes...her insanity is showing in those wild eyes! NEW YORK, YOU DID THIS......YOU ELECTED THIS INSANE WOMAN....WHAT DOES THAT MAKE YOU LOOK LIKE??????????????????????? OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kevcali

Oct 9, 2019

I agree with Trump on this one- send her back!

61mouse

Oct 9, 2019

When liberals rule criminals drool

61mouse

Oct 9, 2019

AOC = Another One Clueless

We9erfam

Oct 10, 2019

And she fell and bumped her dam retarded head too now. She has gone crazy

Jmac_Canada

Oct 10, 2019

In the interest of full disclosure, I am not an American although I lived and worked (electrical engineer) in nocal for 5 years. I googled myself ass backward into your site here by accident and figured I would weigh in as this is something I developed an opinion on while down there.

I am fairly certain that the point she was making was that you guys are massively over-incarcerating yourselves and its a high time that you dialed that sh1t back. She was not advocating the release of violent offenders. Insinuating that she was is a straw man fallacy.

To her point, you guys are criminalizing large swathes on a pace which vastly outpaces other western democracies. I am now in my late 40s and I have lived and worked in North and South America, Europe and the Middle East. I have met and gotten to know loads of people from a variety of different cultures and I patently refuse to accept that Americans are that much more prone to anti-social, criminal behaviour that are other people and yet your massively highrr rates of incarceration would seem to indicate otherwise. Of course, that is absurd.

The root of the problem, of course, rests with your draconian War on Drugs, the effects of which have had a terrible impact on your working class and poor and have (in conjunction with the War on Terror) have eviscerated your constitutional 4th Amendment, reducing it to a meaningless shell of the framers intent.

I will never understand the logic of hammering individuals with state violence (arrest, incarceration, etc) who had done nothing wrong other than put a substance into their own bodies. The sovereignty of the individual should be absolute in such matters. It actually beggars belief that a grown adult can be so thorougly brutalized by the nation state for engaging in these practices.

So, in short, I think that ending the dark ages of drug prohibition would go a long way in mitigating these problems. And it would right some of the terrible wrongs being commited in the name of "justice". And assuming that this is some sort of law enforcement site, this step would free up police resources to dealing with actual violent offenders. Furthermore, it would, with the stroke of a pen, transfer drug revenues from the coffers of criminal organizations to those on the legitimate side of the fence, with taxes on the products used for treatment rather than smashing in skulls. Just a thought.

J..

Cowboycop22

Oct 10, 2019

This is what u get for putting a low iq bartender in office. Someone need a to run against her.

cops-kid

Oct 10, 2019

My moneys on sniffing glue, ain't no way drugs mess you up that bad

Lt.Jules

Oct 10, 2019

She's a congresswoman??? OMG, I thought she was a stand up comedian! But seriously, I don't know why everyone's so surprised. This is, for the most part, exactly what our government is made up of. The better people who are elected, who have integrity and truly love what America stood for, get set up or become like the other lepers, don't last - being run out and talk about a minority. It's getting harder and harder to be proud of this country. Hurts my heart for the young men & women who are willing to die for freedom and for those who did.

Marine.001

Oct 10, 2019

The thing ur not all getting is she comes from a pretty rich family. Parents paid for her college, she’s not some poor bartender who just happen to win election, that’s what they want u to see. Now college degrees don’t come w common sense, which she has none of. She’ll fade away into the night or someone who really can’t stand her does something to her and then will ask should they go to jail? Or gives coloring book to learn better. RETARD